Jeniya Mard

Mermaids

The sea is all but understanding:
for women, of any and every age,
once beginning to bleed,
sometimes before,
are already ankle-deep on the shoreline;
the ripples of the water— their hearts
a monitor on the table
under the clam-colored shine & shimmer 
of a knife

& once women unbandage their legs,
their bodies, 
if they so desire to acquire them, 
will sacrifice their mind

the skin of their feet will be raw,
the wound to be flushed with water, oil,
cleansed with foam
before their flesh begins to tear 
& roll off her body as sand 

for lives such as theirs
is no life to be lived,
but if they’re lucky,
they’ll die in the end.

The Hundredth Year

“ He was sure that sooner or later he would get a
Daguerreotype of God, if He existed, 
or put an end once and for all to the supposition of His existence. “  

— From the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez

Eyes open at birth,
I used to believe the sand of 
the universe would blemish
in his grasp or slip between his fingers 
like a fading star burning so bright 
it tore a hole within the sky.

The obsession with a body
full of the same blood as his own 
sprouted a pigs tail while the others, 
smooth-skinned and wide-eyed,
bled and throbbed in the anguish 
of a seventeen-man army.

And yet, when the sky is grey
and every silk-thin caterpillar
tucks their bruised legs and tired
eyes away within their chrysalis, 
wrapped in the black bandage of 
their innocence, lay their minds to rest 
and suspend their bodies in the fragile 
vulnerability of sleep, 
isolated from the outside world,
and await for the arrival 
of the blessèd morning sun.

The son of Lina Marcela 
Medina de Jurado

CW: theme of pedophillic rape

“ Medina has never revealed the identity of the father 
nor the circumstances of her impregnation . . . 
she might not know herself, as she 
‘ couldn't give precise responses. ‘ “ 
— Dr. Edmundo Escomel, journal La Presse Médicale

They said you could not have been my mother, so they called me your brother. 
They said we should not let God’s creatures suffer, so they called me your brother. 

But to suffer is to bring life; for the flowers that bloom in frost will die far faster then in spring, their petals wilting before the others, so they called me your brother. 

Your ribs, like fresh grass, were weak and malleable, any movement causing a shift in organs that left your heart throbbing like a cherry in summer, so they called me your brother. 

It is bad luck to open an oyster before it is fully grown, to pluck its pearl with bare hands, but still, they rolled the jewel around between their fingers, to bask in the milky color, so they called me your brother.

Here is a rare, well-documented case; that is all you were, no flesh, no bones, a case. 
And they said you did not know you were my mother, so they called me your brother.

Jeniya Mard is a writer from Metro Detroit who believes in the good in everyone and everything. Her writing has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Marrow Magazine, Sky Island Journal, The Central Review, Artemis Journal, and others.